I had to replace a hallway light bulb in an apartment building today. The light hangs from the ceiling with a glass bowl under the bulb. These bowls normally get a pretty good layer of bugs at the bottom which are easily visible when the light is on.

As I set up the ladder, I noticed that even though not lit, this light was obviously no exception. I unscrewed the hangers and lowered the bowl, careful to avoid dumping the contents in my face. Inside, there were the usual bugs, and a sheet of ripped up paper with printing on it.

Someone ripped up some unwanted thing and lofted the pieces into the light 7 feet off the floor! I've found light trash before in the form of gum wrappers and small wads of this or that, but this took effort and the necessary skill to throw 15 or 20 small paper pieces into one light bowl. What is that? What kind of brain fart does someone have that says "rip up this paper and put it in this light shade"?

Of course, not content with simply emptying out the trash, I've been thinking about this off and on all morning. It's no big deal, but it is a matter of curiosity. People indeed do strange things, but whatever one does, they generally don't do it thinking to themselves "this is stupid, but I'm doing it anyway." No! Whatever one is doing at any given moment is an action that the mind involved has somehow rationalized as being OK to do. In this instance, how did the perpetrator come to that conclusion? As an addendum, one floor down, there is an empty waste basket in the hall---"Better not use that, it's someone else's."?